Limits of US freeze' lobby
Socialist Organiser1983 1983-10-20Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 7 →
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Tom THE 'Freeze' slogan now being pushed by the CND leadership first came to the fore in the USA.
A look at the 'freeze' campaign in the US tells us a lot about the implications that a shift from unilateralism to 'freeze' could have for CND in Britain.
The US peace movement gets most of its support from the middie class. And in an important sense it is not really a movement at all.
The backbone of the campaign is not the local groups, as in Britain. Some active groups do exist in the major urban centres, but the campaign as a whole is built around computer direct mailing techniques. The mailings concentrate on a 'typical' freeze supporter with an average income of around $25,000, usually non-union, professional, educated, a home-owner: Such people tend to be basically conservative in politics, but radical on a few particular issues.
The freeze campaign gets most of its finance and direction from a small group of wealthy individuals and institutions.
Among the inner circle are the Rockefellers, the Stern fund, and the Field Foundation. By the end of 1982, the major funders calculated that they had already laid out more than The freeze campaign has chalked up a whole series of successes. It gained 87% support in a nation-wide opinion poll in May 1982; referendum victories in nine states, including California and Massachusetts; backing from "nearly half the US Catholic bishops and all the major contenders for the US Democratic Party nomination. cold war begins to hot up, support for the freeze will melt away dramatically.
This is what happened when the South Korean' airliner was shot down. Those freeze supporters in the Senate who had held up the development of the MX missile project caved in.
In a panic they "went along with Reagan's response, and voted for his defence package, which included MX.
This kind of internal moral collapse may have been predictable. But it is important to understand its political roots.
The US freeze movement is plainly multilateralist, ie. the emphasis is placed firmly on the actions of governments and negotiators, first to halt and then to bring about a balanced reduction in the manufacture, testing and deployment of nuclear weapons.
The role of the average freeze supporter in this strategy is minimal: hence the concentration on computer mailings.